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Paper short abstract:

This research seeks to study the symbolic complexity of food in history of XX c., as well as its social importance in contemporary society of Kazakhstan. I am trying to examine how ethno-demographic changes and social interactions of the past influenced eating behaviors and identities nowadays.

Paper long abstract:

This research seeks to study the symbolic complexity of food in history of XX c., as well as its social importance in contemporary society of Kazakhstan. I am trying to examine how ethno-demographic changes and social interactions of the past influenced eating behaviors and identities nowadays.

Over the XX c. the ethno-demographic situation in Kazakhstan has undergone major changes. Taken place historical events such as Stolypin land reform, World War I, Revolt of 1916, the civil war, famines in 1921-1922 and 1932-33, the state policy of forced settlements in the Soviet Union. In the result, Kazakhstan turned into a giant reservation, where hundreds of thousands of people were exiled from different parts of the USSR.

Mas crimes under Stalin toughed many public and state figures, representatives of various segments of the population, as well as entire peoples and ethnic groups were deported from their permanent places of residence. Nowadays, all of them together they formed a unique cultural environment and the basis of a multi-ethnic state - Kazakhstan. In the conditions of an independent country and a civil understanding of the theory of "national identity", they all make up one nation - Kazakhstani. Accordingly, mixed cultures with different historical background and located in one land created unique national cuisine - regionally specific and full of recipes which indelibly influenced by historical background.

This study based on fieldwork materials like oral history interviews, surveys, archive sources. These research experiences have culminated in an enduring interest in varied aspects of food, foodways and national identity. Research methodology of this study based on conceptual approaches and general methods of scientific knowledge: historicism and objectivity (observation, comparison, measurement, analysis)